Basement X

How does your stores work? Pay a deposit, what kind of discount, how long they hold it, etc?

I went with Krista (the girlfriend) yesterday to get her a pull list for Invincible and Walking Dead, and Stump Town for me since my store in Montreal has trouble getting it.

We went to the store by her house. They want a 15 dollar deposit to open a file and offered a 5% discount. How is that even worth it? On top of it, they only want to hold your books 2 weeks. So, if you're only getting 2 or 3 regular books, you still pretty much have to come in when they come out, and you're paying for the privilege to do so. It was ridiculous.

Why should I pay you to guarantee you sale? That and 5% is awful, let alone having to get them every 2 weeks. Once a month is good, I think.

The only way I could understand them wanting a bit of good faith, is if the guy had 15-20 books in his list, then if they want $20 or a credit card slip, I could understand.

I've listed it in another thread, but the shop I go to down herehas a pretty easy system. They're the only shop in town anymore, but I went to theirs and another when i first moved here.

The pull list is automatic if you want it, without any kind of security deposit whatsoever. I asked them how long they hold books and they said so long as you pick them up, or it doesn't become a really bother for them, they've held books for up to 3 months for people usually. But I would assume those are people who only read a few books.

Since I read about 20, and I told them this, I made sure they knew I'd visit weekly unless out of town in case they had issues with people who didn't pick up regurlarly. And when I'm gone for longer than one or two weeks, I let them know when I'll be back so they don't stop pulling for any reason.

They have a discount system, but you do have to pay to get it. For $10, you get a 10% discount for a full year. I do that because, after only a few weeks, it pays itself back since I normally get around 4-5 books a week. They have another level that allows for 15% (or maybe 20, not positive) and a free copy of Previews every month but I didn't have use for that. So I have a card that they sign saying how much I get and when it expires.


The shop I used to work at, we would offer folders to anyone who asked and when I first worked there it was basically an automatic 10% off. But as business declined over a few years, we started dropping that because people were abusing it, and we kept giving it to solid regulars who always kept their pull list cleared and didn't wait over a month or more to pick up books. Now I'm not sure if they still offer discounts to many people or not, but I get it since I used to work there.

We also hit a point where if people didn't clear out their folder after 1-2 weeks, we would pull the books out. This was due to most people who would come in after 3-4 weeks, pick about 5-10 books and ask us to hold the rest, which could be around 12-20 additional books. And they weren't picking the oldest books, they were getting newer or special ones. So when the boss got pissed at this, he put a stop to it, unless it was someone who couldn't come in weekly, but always did pick up EVERY book they had unless they just didn't want the book itself.

I don't know what all they've done since I left, but business is definitely hurting in Kokomo, as fewer regulars seem to keep coming in due to money and most readers just getting older and older, with less younger readers coming in. I think Bloomington's does well enough because it's a college town, so there's a huge range of readers. I'm sure summer monoths are a bit rougher, but with 40,000 additional people in the town 9 months out of the year alone, I think they get by.

My store has a very simple system. You open a pull list, tell that what title you want and they'll just put it in your box. No deposit but also no discount as they can't afford to give discount to anyone considering how bad the business is for them.
Also, they keep your books for as long as you want them too.

My store is a small store with a big backer (it's sister company is a video game store in the mall). We don't pay anything at all to open up a file, we get 10-20% off depending on certain stuff (aka if you're a douche you probably get 10%, if you're buddy-buddy with the manager you get 20%). And as for how long books stay there? Well, the books just stay there. Forever. And ever. Once your stack hits the top of the shelf he stops adding to it, but he never breaks it down. There are Uncanny X-Men issues from the late 300s in a couple of files I saw, lol. I keep teasing him that if he emptied out some of the files he'll find a gold mine but he just doesn't care enough to.

XIII and Jedi have the system I would expect most stores to follow. Very curious.

In my store you just tell them you want a pull list and tell them what's on it. If you get there every month, you get a 20% discount, if you get there less regularely, it's a 10% discount (their shelf prices are rather high, though, so it's basically a 10% discount of regular prices if you go there every month). Not sure how long they keep the stuff, I know I got called once when I hadn't been there in about two months or so.

My shop has a message board on the internet. I win.

We had one for the one I used to work at. It was used heavily for about...2-3 weeks then everyone just stopped. I check on it every now and then. Deader than this board. My old Shop is putting on a Con in the town though.

The board of my comics shop has about 6 members, including the 2 owners of the store. It's fun.

That's how ours was.. very few people used it so it just kind of.. got dropped. It was mostly the 4 of us that worked at the shop so it wasn't much different from days we were all there. Few others were on it, and I think they're the ones who mostly use it now.